承包制下不可再生资源耗竭问题研究

On the Depletion of Non-renewable Resources with Contract Systems

不可再生资源如煤和石油的使用不同于一般商品的消费,其存量的固定性特征导致其越来越少。这样就需要研究该种商品的最优代际分配问题,即研究其开采规律和定价模式。近些年中国的不可再生资源如煤的过度开采和使用已经是一个相当严重且亟待解决的问题。本文将证明在社会主义市场经济体制下,不完整的产权制度如承包制是导致不可再生资源滥采滥用的一个重要原因。即使是在完全竞争的市场结构下,如此的产权制度安排也不能使厂商内部化使用者成本,因此过低的价格引起资源的过快耗竭。

The use of non-renewable natural resources, such as coal and oil, is different from the ones of common produets. The,fundamental difference is the fixed stocks of non-renewable resources, which leads to that the more non-renewable resources the present people consume, the less non-renewable resources the future people will consume. And this extemal cost is called user cost. According to the Hotelling＇ s rule, the growth rate of prices of non-renewable resourees should equal the interest rate, and then we can achieve the social optimum. In recent years the excessive extraction of nun-renewable natural resources has been very serious problem in China. One of the most important reasons is not to internalize the external cost, i.e. user cost. In the process of reform from traditional planned economy to socialist market economy, the cenrral and local governments began to implement the contract operation responsibility system of enterprises from 1980s. As a mode of combining plan and market, the contract system indeed had incentive role on enterprise operation and economic development, However, it is an imperfect measure when used in the non-renewable resource industries. Enterprises sign contracts with governments, acquiring the mining rights. But the mining rights have a limited maturity date, In this paper, we argue by math model that it is the incomplete property rights, such as the contract operatinn responsibility system, to lead to the abuse of non-rer, ewable resourees in the socialist market economic systems. Such systems of property rights don＇t enable firms to intemalize user cost even in perfectly competitive markets due to the limited maturity dale. Intuitively, at this time, firms would not take the future revenues after the malurity dale into account, thus the prices of non-renewable resources will be too lower due to not including the user cost, The Lower price leads to quicker exhaustion. Therefore, to achieve the social optimum, the government should sell the complete mining rights to enterprises by such as auction, and allow the transfer of property rights, and then it is possible to achieve the conservation of resources and sustainable development.